YouTube urged to pull down teacher videos

Share

Web giants like YouTube have been urged to get tough with the cyber-bullies that use their sites to make pupils’ and teachers’ lives a misery. The education secretary Alan Johnson will say web providers have a “moral obligation” to cut offensive videos of people being attacked, harassed or ridiculed. Bullying is causing many teachers to leave the profession and Mr Johnson will also point to new powers teachers have to confiscate mobile phones and MP3 players used for such abuse.

Here’s a quick selection of the type of stuff that is on the site. Frankly we were pretty shocked by what we saw. Not that there is anything especially controversial about the videos, but it does highlight that there is plenty of classroom action on the site.

So what will YouTube do about this? The major of appeal of such a site is that it is a two way medium, allowing people to upload whatever they like. Will this be the beginning of the end for YouTube and sites like it? Will restrictions be imposed that will stifle the raison d’être of the video site?

Also how can YouTube police videos like these? Surely there are technical issues which will prevent it from stopping the videos being uploaded?